Tuesday, December 18, 2007

MusicBridge 3.0

Today I started work on MusicBridge 3.0. The main planned features revolve around export/import functionality. Giving users the ability to take advantage of MusicBridge syncing across disconnected multiple computers. The functionality will offer the opportunity to export from either iTunes or WMP into a format ready to be imported into either iTunes or WMP. MusicBridge will be required to be installed on each machine. The export/import process will be disconnected and the data will be transferred by means of an XML file that the user will move from one machine to the other.

The process will require a 'similar' structure for the music folders on each machine. It will not require matching absolute paths, but will require filenames and 2 levels of containing folders to match.

Brilliant app already, a lifesaver. I use it so that my Xbox 360 can use iTunes playlists.

Is there any chance that v3 would allow us to exclude certain playlists from being synced? I mainly ask because certain ones that get synched (like Music - the whole library! - and also the contents of attached iPods) make the playlist sync process take a long time...

I just installed SP1 for Vista. I was hoping that it would perhaps fix the issue where iTunes refuses to import files/folders (without any error message - as documented here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6548231#6548231).It doesn't however...But when I started MusicBridge, it crashed for the first time... I aven't repeated the crash yet but wanted to let you know....

Just to let know that the crash I experience under Vista SP1 never replicated.My suggestion for new functionality: a user-friendly "delta ttol": allowing to quickly see which files/folders are not residing in iTunes vs WMP.Even better: a working tool to have iTunes 'watch/monitor' the My Music folder and be able to schedule syncing of meta data through MusicBridge....

Musicbridge is great. A great feature would be the ability to do record-level sync as opposed to across the board replacement. I'm specifically looking at syncing ratings, if I rate different songs in both WMP and itunes, and I sync for example itunes-> wmp then itunes will overwrite the ones I did in WMP

I agree with the above poster it would be cool to merge instead of overwrite.

Also, my directory structure is only one level deep, i.e. "Artist - Album/" vs. "Artist/Album/" so I wouldn't want the 'two levels' thing to be a requirement, just let me point to the "root" on both machines and use relative paths.

Sounds great - I need network path support because my Music is on my NAS and iTunes stores it as M:\Music whereas WMP has it as \\NAS\Music - so the current version doesn't work for me.Love the idea behind the program tho - I need it!As someone else mentioned, it would be great to be able to select which playlists to export.. (and have them as a comma seperated list as a command-line parameter)

Agreed with Heidi. I would love that feature for play counts only. At home I use Vista MCE on my HTPC and while in my car or travelling, I use my iPod. So syncing vs overwrite would be excellent, I base some of my playlist with date last played and play counts...

Hey just wanted to see if MBv3 will be compatible with Windows 7 and WMP 12. Also, is there anyway to sync the metadata with the actual tags that are in the explorer window? Great program, thanks for creating it.